“…cool. So now it could be literally anywhere in town.”

"We might just have to stake out the unitarians and hope we see something."

“Guess so.”

He’s fiddling with his dubiously-legal switchblade in his pocket. There’s a familiar click as it opens and closes.

"Listen, Z should be finishing up his shift at that awful little tattoo place in like half an hour. Why don't you swing by and pick him up, and we can all put our heads together about the lake monster and whatever's been going on at the belltower lately?"

“He really needs to get a car.”

"We did kind of get his last one squished."

“That’s…fair.”

He gets his jean jacket from upstairs, before he goes, the one he usually only wears out on hunts when it’s as hot as it is. It’s closer to armor than anything he wears. (Well, anything but the kevlar.)

Camillo lets him go without threats of heatstroke. He needs all the armor he can get, today.

In the meantime, Camillo beats the bounds, renewing and strengthening what protections he can, checking the curses that serve as pitfalls and tripwires. Nothing has been breached since yesterday, which is good. Another of the greater wards has fallen from disrepair, which isn't. 

He traces the dove's blood on the lintel with his fingers. Valentine never let him see how to set that one. Today doesn't seem like a good day to ask.

Cato returns, shortly,

with their houseguest right on his heels.

“Hey — I heard —”

"He's back. But taking it really easy for the moment. He's had a rough time of it."

Z gets the tightest possible hug.

Camillo gets the same. (This is a very good time for Z to be a tall guy who lifts, in his own opinion.)

“Yeah, no shit — Cato said there’s a, uh, piercing thing I might need to look at?”

Camillo squeaks, because all of the air is being squished out of his lungs, and then he lands back on his feet and gives it another try.

"That's a really good idea, yeah. He's in the panic room, just until we're sure everything's cool. C'mon."

Z follows him downstairs, ducking the little bundle of dried herbs that’s the right height for everyone who lives here but always hits him in the forehead.

The door to the panic room is locked. This makes sense, given the purpose of the panic room.

Camillo knocks.

"Hey -- Z's here, can we come in?"

It takes a minute.

After a wait, “Passphrase?” comes muffled through the door.

(Voices are easy to mimic.)

"Pink Zelda kissed six Pikachus under the hemlock tree."

(It's an old passphrase.)

(Even given the direness of the circumstances, Z has to cover a laugh.)

Valentine, on opening the door, just seems quietly relieved.

Z abruptly forgets how to code switch.

“Uh — hi. Welcome back, man.”

Camillo was in the room, once, while Z tried to talk down an internet friend over a voice call. 

He doesn’t sound exactly like he did then, but it’s close.

"Z's gonna take a look at your foot. He's good with -- home piercings."

“That’s one thing to call it,” he muses, as he limps across the room to sit on the futon.

He raises his foot to set it beside him on the bed, gingerly.

Z kneels beside the bed to take a look.

“…how the fuck is this healed?” he says, immediately.